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This very clearly and simply describes the differences between absolute freedom, limited freedom, and the value of limiting freedom. In a way, it's similar to

This very clearly and simply describes the differences between absolute freedom, limited freedom, and the value of limiting freedom. In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. Or to quote Team America: freedom isn't free. I may be re-thinking my own use of BSD licensing in favour of something more copyleft in future too.

umanwizard 7y ago
My view is: if you don’t care what people do with your software and just want anyone who finds it useful to use it, including anyone from Stallman-esque ideologues to cogs in the FAANG machine and everyone in between, then use BSD, MIT or similar. If you care about “free software” as an ideological movement and only want to give your software to people who are, in exchange, willing to help advance it, then use copyleft. I am sure that some copyleft fans will have different interpretations or motivations. I’m just giving mine :) (This all applies to contributions done in an individual’s free time. Companies contributing to open source for strategic reasons might think about these decisions in different terms).
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  Exactly the same for me. For most personal creations, I seriously do not care at all what happens to it. I just don't want to be successfully sued over it.
- dmm 7y ago
  I use the GPL because I want every user of my software to have the right to use, examine, modify and create derivative works. Every user, not just programmer and entrepreneurs making products. I want to live in a world where software, which plays an increasingly important role in our lives, can be modified by anyone. Imagine if only google could fix your plumbing I've found that programmers tend to frame licenses in they way you have, placing emphasis on how the GPL affects them and describing the GPL as a way to enforce tit-for-tat but software is such an important part of everyone's life now that it's worth considering how licenses affect non-developers too.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > I've found that programmers tend to frame licenses in they way you have, placing emphasis on how the GPL affects them and describing the GPL as a way to enforce tit-for-tat but software is such an important part of everyone's life now that it's worth considering how licenses affect non-developers too. That's the point people keep forgetting. GPL wasn't created to benefit developers, it was created to benefit end users.
    - hlkps 7y ago
      My iPhone has a BSD-licenced kernel. Having that kernel under that licence benefits me as an end user of the product. Maybe having used another kernel would've resulted in a less stable mobile that would not have taken off.
      - pessimizer 7y ago
        I doubt any licensing makes your phone more stable, but if it were unstable, the GPL would certainly certainly make it easier/cheaper to fix.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        umanwizard 7y ago
        > I doubt any licensing makes your phone more stable Sure it does. Without open-source software to base their work on, Apple would have had to start from scratch and possibly never get the project into a usable state. (In fact, they did actually try several multiple times to replace Mac OS 9 with an in-house-developed OS, before eventually buying NeXT, whose OS was rebranded as OS X and ultimately became iOS).
        jeena 7y ago
        But if it were unstable, the GPL would certainly certainly make it easier/cheaper to fix.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  "if you don't care what people do with your software and just want anyone who finds it useful to use it, including anyone from Stallman-esque ideologues to cogs in the FAANG machine and everyone in between, then use BSD, MIT or similar. If you care about "free software" as an ideological movement and only want to give your software to people who are, in exchange, willing to help advance it, then use copyleft." It's really not about advancing ideologies but advancing your software. For software under with a Free license, the source code to any improvements someone else made to your software would have to be distributed along with it. Without it, they could keep any improvements they made to themselves. So using a Free license provides a tangible, non-ideological benefit to your software, in so far as the source to any improvements will be distributed and can be integrated back in to it to make it better. The one wrinkle is that the traditional GPL was not designed for situations where the software is never actually distributed -- ie. "web services"/SAAS and the like. In that case, even software under the traditional GPL that companies like, say, Google uses could be improved by them without having to distribute the source, as the software only runs on their servers and is never distributed anywhere. This is where the AGPL comes in, and why Google forbids using AGPL software inhouse. This is also why I license all my own software under the AGPL.
ben509 7y ago
> In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. That's not a paradox; you're just intolerant. Whether you're right or wrong to be so is immaterial, as is whether the people you're intolerant of are also intolerant.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jameskilton 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - ta0987 7y ago
    People keep posting this Wikipedia link as if it ended discussion on the topic. An idea is not automatically true just because it has a Wikipedia article. Even the linked article has quotes from people who disagree: Thomas Jefferson had already addressed the notion of a tolerant society in his first inaugural speech, concerning those who might destabilise the United States and its unity, saying, "...let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      Jefferson may have changed his mind had he seen the horrors that Nazi ideology led to in WW2 -- and may do so again, the way Europe (and the US) is going.
      - darkpuma 7y ago
        Maybe he would have, maybe he wouldn't have. We'll never know. We'll certainly never know if Jefferson would have thought the wholesale slaughter of jews to be an appropriate topic to broach when discussing the relative merits of the GPL vs MIT. Instead of resorting to temporally impossible hypotheticals, why not talk about people who actually had the sort of experiences you think are most relevant to the discussion?
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
It's the difference between political freedom and metaphorical freedom (knowledge & rights). Political freedom I define as not being subject to violence unless you're attacking someone or stealing (material objects) from someone. Metaphorical (software) freedom is being in control of your computer, that means: you run free software (you know what you're running) and you can use and distribute it freely. There is nothing inherently violent in closed source programs.
- Retra 7y ago
  Violence is usually too far removed from the relevant abstractions. It's not difficult to see violence behind everything, because rules don't mean much if they aren't enforced, and it's all too easy to conflate violence with a threat of violence, or a threat of force with a threat of violence, etc. But that's not a very useful perspective; a well-functioning society filters violence so that it is only applied when things go seriously awry, and most of us should only ever threatened by minor inconveniences. To focus on violence is to be reductive; it is like trying to talk about programming in terms of electromagnetic laws -- yes, computers ultimately run on electricity, and social powers are ultimately enforced through violence, but the abstractions we've built atop those facts are actually very relevant and useful. Political freedom is not simply about establishing when violence is appropriate. It's broader than that -- it's about the functional ways we can convert violence into something softer without abdicating our ability to govern ourselves effectively. More to the point, closed source software doesn't need to be 'inherently violent' for it to cause problems. Nothing is inherently violent, and political freedoms are not defined by violence any more than computer programming is defined by electricity use.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Property rights are the primary domain of politics. If you personally define a certain formulation of property rights as a natural state, your opinions on how freedom should be defined are going to spring from that formulation.

umanwizard 7y ago

My view is: if you don’t care what people do with your software and just want anyone who finds it useful to use it, including anyone from Stallman-esque ideologues to cogs in the FAANG machine and everyone in between, then use BSD, MIT or similar. If you care about “free software” as an ideological movement and only want to give your software to people who are, in exchange, willing to help advance it, then use copyleft. I am sure that some copyleft fans will have different interpretations or motivations. I’m just giving mine :) (This all applies to contributions done in an individual’s free time. Companies contributing to open source for strategic reasons might think about these decisions in different terms).

abstractbarista 7y ago
Exactly the same for me. For most personal creations, I seriously do not care at all what happens to it. I just don't want to be successfully sued over it.
dmm 7y ago
I use the GPL because I want every user of my software to have the right to use, examine, modify and create derivative works. Every user, not just programmer and entrepreneurs making products. I want to live in a world where software, which plays an increasingly important role in our lives, can be modified by anyone. Imagine if only google could fix your plumbing I've found that programmers tend to frame licenses in they way you have, placing emphasis on how the GPL affects them and describing the GPL as a way to enforce tit-for-tat but software is such an important part of everyone's life now that it's worth considering how licenses affect non-developers too.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > I've found that programmers tend to frame licenses in they way you have, placing emphasis on how the GPL affects them and describing the GPL as a way to enforce tit-for-tat but software is such an important part of everyone's life now that it's worth considering how licenses affect non-developers too. That's the point people keep forgetting. GPL wasn't created to benefit developers, it was created to benefit end users.
  - hlkps 7y ago
    My iPhone has a BSD-licenced kernel. Having that kernel under that licence benefits me as an end user of the product. Maybe having used another kernel would've resulted in a less stable mobile that would not have taken off.
    - pessimizer 7y ago
      I doubt any licensing makes your phone more stable, but if it were unstable, the GPL would certainly certainly make it easier/cheaper to fix.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - umanwizard 7y ago
        > I doubt any licensing makes your phone more stable Sure it does. Without open-source software to base their work on, Apple would have had to start from scratch and possibly never get the project into a usable state. (In fact, they did actually try several multiple times to replace Mac OS 9 with an in-house-developed OS, before eventually buying NeXT, whose OS was rebranded as OS X and ultimately became iOS).
        jeena 7y ago
        But if it were unstable, the GPL would certainly certainly make it easier/cheaper to fix.
pmoriarty 7y ago
"if you don't care what people do with your software and just want anyone who finds it useful to use it, including anyone from Stallman-esque ideologues to cogs in the FAANG machine and everyone in between, then use BSD, MIT or similar. If you care about "free software" as an ideological movement and only want to give your software to people who are, in exchange, willing to help advance it, then use copyleft." It's really not about advancing ideologies but advancing your software. For software under with a Free license, the source code to any improvements someone else made to your software would have to be distributed along with it. Without it, they could keep any improvements they made to themselves. So using a Free license provides a tangible, non-ideological benefit to your software, in so far as the source to any improvements will be distributed and can be integrated back in to it to make it better. The one wrinkle is that the traditional GPL was not designed for situations where the software is never actually distributed -- ie. "web services"/SAAS and the like. In that case, even software under the traditional GPL that companies like, say, Google uses could be improved by them without having to distribute the source, as the software only runs on their servers and is never distributed anywhere. This is where the AGPL comes in, and why Google forbids using AGPL software inhouse. This is also why I license all my own software under the AGPL.

ben509 7y ago

> In a way, it's similar to the paradox of tolerance, and a tolerant society needing to be intolerant of those that are intolerant. That's not a paradox; you're just intolerant. Whether you're right or wrong to be so is immaterial, as is whether the people you're intolerant of are also intolerant.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jameskilton 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- ta0987 7y ago
  People keep posting this Wikipedia link as if it ended discussion on the topic. An idea is not automatically true just because it has a Wikipedia article. Even the linked article has quotes from people who disagree: Thomas Jefferson had already addressed the notion of a tolerant society in his first inaugural speech, concerning those who might destabilise the United States and its unity, saying, "...let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    Jefferson may have changed his mind had he seen the horrors that Nazi ideology led to in WW2 -- and may do so again, the way Europe (and the US) is going.
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      Maybe he would have, maybe he wouldn't have. We'll never know. We'll certainly never know if Jefferson would have thought the wholesale slaughter of jews to be an appropriate topic to broach when discussing the relative merits of the GPL vs MIT. Instead of resorting to temporally impossible hypotheticals, why not talk about people who actually had the sort of experiences you think are most relevant to the discussion?

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

It's the difference between political freedom and metaphorical freedom (knowledge & rights). Political freedom I define as not being subject to violence unless you're attacking someone or stealing (material objects) from someone. Metaphorical (software) freedom is being in control of your computer, that means: you run free software (you know what you're running) and you can use and distribute it freely. There is nothing inherently violent in closed source programs.

Retra 7y ago
Violence is usually too far removed from the relevant abstractions. It's not difficult to see violence behind everything, because rules don't mean much if they aren't enforced, and it's all too easy to conflate violence with a threat of violence, or a threat of force with a threat of violence, etc. But that's not a very useful perspective; a well-functioning society filters violence so that it is only applied when things go seriously awry, and most of us should only ever threatened by minor inconveniences. To focus on violence is to be reductive; it is like trying to talk about programming in terms of electromagnetic laws -- yes, computers ultimately run on electricity, and social powers are ultimately enforced through violence, but the abstractions we've built atop those facts are actually very relevant and useful. Political freedom is not simply about establishing when violence is appropriate. It's broader than that -- it's about the functional ways we can convert violence into something softer without abdicating our ability to govern ourselves effectively. More to the point, closed source software doesn't need to be 'inherently violent' for it to cause problems. Nothing is inherently violent, and political freedoms are not defined by violence any more than computer programming is defined by electricity use.
pessimizer 7y ago
Property rights are the primary domain of politics. If you personally define a certain formulation of property rights as a natural state, your opinions on how freedom should be defined are going to spring from that formulation.